


I am alive with you

by gloss



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Bedsharing, Everyone just needs to listen to BB-8, Feelings Are Hard and Weird, Multi, Polyamory, Relationship Negotiation, Secret Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-05 07:30:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6695473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"Maybe we should talk about all of this," Finn says. "Us, and everything going on."</i><br/> <i>Poe starts laughing for real, and then he can't stop when he realizes all too late that that wasn't a joke. It was an entirely earnest suggestion.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. whence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mage_girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mage_girl/gifts).



> Thanks so much to M. for brainstorming and beta'ing and letting me steal her thoughts, and tumblr pals for being kind.

I am alive with you  
        full of anxious pleasures & pleasurable anxiety  
hardness & softness — Frank O'Hara, "St. Paul and All That"

 

After the evacuation of D'Qar, the resistance breaks up into four sub-formations. It takes Poe a certain amount of wheeling and dealing to ensure that Finn is assigned with him to Formation Zero. That was one thing. Now, he's supervising duty rosters and pulling better assignments for Finn and shifts that match up with his own.

"I'm not a combatant," Finn argues. "Not officially. Concentrate on the people doing the real work."

Poe just shakes his head and squints even more at the tables and lists of names, training, and specialties, trying to weigh the populations and ensure relatively equitable distribution of resources and personnel.

"Hey," Finn says, more loudly, grasping Poe by the shoulder. "I'm not kidding. Are you listening to me?"

"I heard you," Poe replies without looking up, instead reaching for another datapad from the ever-slippery stack. "I'm not acknowledging it, but I heard you just fine."

"Unbelievable." Finn leaves the room then. He needs fresh air - not that there was any to be had aboard this rickety old warship where they'd all been crammed together for two agonizingly long days already - but at least the air in the passage is stale in a slightly different way than that in the cabin.

He is just a little less than a standard month conscious and back on his feet. He still isn't entirely - or even a little - sure which end is up, where he's headed, or much of anything. Everyone says that normal life is like this, chancy and uncertain, and who is he to argue? He seems to have acquired a boyfriend, which is _splendid_ , beyond comprehension, something out of a story or a whole different universe. But Rey is nowhere to be found, which hurts like he is still falling against the frozen ground, back screaming, Ren laughing at him. There's too much lately for Finn to do much more than try to keep up. 

"Where'd you go?" Poe asks over comlink, later, when Finn has walked off his anger and is now just moving out of habit.

Finn looks around. Every passage looks like the last, distinguished only by different patterns made by the paint bubbling and flaking across the bulkhead or the specific rhythm of flickering lights. Like the facilities on D'Qar, the warship _Soruna_ is a relic that feels half-overgrown and forgotten, but it's so much colder and staler here. "I'm not sure," he tells Poe. "Same level, but pretty far."

"I'll come to you," Poe says, but doesn't cut the link. After a couple moments, he clears his throat. "If that's okay. I don't want to presume. Do you want to be alone?"

Crossing his arms, Finn rubs his forearms and shivers a little. The cold here is different from that on Starkiller. Damper, more insidious. It gets right under his skin. "No, come, it's okay."

 _Where'd you go?_ is exactly what Dr. Kalonia asked him after he came to. She smiled as she said it, checking his readings. He assumed it wasn't a literal question.

But then she waited, head slightly inclined, faint smile on her face. Finn sucked down the rejuvenation liquid through a straw while trying to frame an answer. He could see where he'd been, in wisps and fragments that were already starting to fade and break up, but he didn't know the words to describe it. 

"Somewhere else," he finally said.

"Ah, seems to be a popular destination these days," she replied and patted his arm. "We're all very glad you decided to return."

Finn paces now, waiting for Poe, working his hands open and closed as he moves. He tries to remember the physio he's supposed to do for his back - he has healed fine, but they want him to stretch and focus and do exercises that he's _pretty_ sure are for mental well-being, not physical health. There's imagining a gold ribbon running down his spine, plaiting itself around him, pulling him up strong and straight. There's floating down a green river, over wide flat stones, along banks soft with moss. There's spreading his arms, going up on the tips of his toes, and feeling the space he finds himself in _press back_ , lift and support and embrace him.

That last one is the silliest, the most difficult one, to imagine. When he does try, he usually ends up feeling himself drop through the dark into the void. That is, as the med-droids say, far from an optimal result.

" _There_ you are!" Poe calls from the end of the passageway. His hair is a mess, frenetically raked through so many times that it's standing up in at least seven different directions. He doesn't look quite as tired as he did even just this morning, however. "Did you _try_ to find the most out of the way corner or are you just some kind of navigational genius?"

Despite himself, Finn smiles. "Little of both, I think."

"Yeah, yeah." Poe stops short. "Sorry for not listening. I mean, I _listened_ , but I --"

"Went ahead because you decided you knew best," Finn says for him.

Poe scowls even as he shrugs. "Maybe? Yeah."

"You can't do that, man," Finn says. "You can't. Don't do that."

Leaning against the bulkhead next to him, Poe rocks gently back and forth, knocking their shoulders together. He thinks best, communicates best, when he's in motion. Finn can sympathize. "I can't give you preferential treatment, yeah."

"Or yourself."

"Not me either?" Poe's eyebrows jump at that as he grins. "Then what's the point of having all this _power_ , I ask you? Huh?"

"Idiot."

"I didn't join this cash-strapped idealistic crusade for the _principles_ ," Poe continues, turning, slipping his hand onto Finn's waist. He pauses, measuring Finn's response, checking that it's okay, before proceeding.

"No? What _did_ bring you here, Commander?" Finn asks, turning to face him, too.

"Obvious, isn't it? Hot dudes and vast amounts of unlimited, totally imaginary, power," Poe answers promptly. He hooks his thumb through Finn's belt loop and pulls himself closer. "Also delicious protein slurries, beige flavor. But mostly the dudes and the power. And paperwork. Fuck, I love paperwork more than anything else."

**x**

Poe hasn't flown a B-Wing/E like this since his first year at the academy. It's every bit as bulky and awkward to handle as all the materials claim. But it does have a nice kick to it in hyperspace and, even better, room for a gunner in the cockpit, unlike any other ship available on the duty roster. Thanks to that, it might well be his favorite starfighter _ever_ , because he gets to fly with Finn again. 

They're limping back to the fleet from a recon mission gone terribly, horrifically wrong when BB-8 picks up the distress call. It comes in on an old channel, in bad, slightly garbled Binary. 

Poe's inclined to dismiss it as a prank or, worse, a trap. 

"Play it again," Finn says, however, from the gunner's seat, so Poe nods at BB-8 and he does.

"We'll miss rendezvous," Poe points out. "Even if we get there, and it is for real, not a mistake or trap or some kid fucking around with gramps' old comcodes, _and_ we turn right around, we'll still miss them."

"We can catch up."

Poe spins his chair so he can see Finn's face. "You sure about this?"

Finn glances out the cockpit window, the curve of his lips shifting as he thinks. "Yeah, I'm sure."

"Okay." Poe jerks his thumb at BB-8, who chirps and rolls over to the onboard nav-computer.

"Really?"

Poe has turned back around, hands on the controls. "Yeah, really. Why?"

"Nothing," Finn says eventually. "Thanks."

"It's not --" Poe actually doesn't quite have time for this; the distress call came from the outskirts of the Hosnian exclusion zone, so it's going to take a series of awkward hyper jumps to sneak in there. "You're welcome. But it's not something you have to say thank you for."

"Okay," Finn calls. "But I am, anyway."

"Fine," Poe says, confirming the nav data. "Noted?"

"Good."

"You're incredibly stubborn, you know that?"

"I just like to be clear," Finn replies. "Call it what you want."

"Yeah, I'm calling it stubborn."

"I'm calling _you_ stubborn."

"Your face is stubborn," Poe says, authorizing the jumps and taking a breath.

"Your dick is stubborn," Finn says as they jump. "Wait, that one's true."

Poe's still laughing a little as they come out of the last jump, but he sobers up immediately. The debris field is much more extensive than the most recent readings had indicated. It is, in fact, the eeriest sight he has seen in a long time: a flat expanse of silvery dust, broad as the sea but without very much depth at all, spreading moment by moment.

Those are _people_ , and everything they loved and touched and needed, reduced to this fine, sifting ash.

He rotates the cockpit physically, first 45°, then another, before finding what they came for.

The _Millennium Falcon_ , swamped by ash, listing awkwardly.

"Rey?" Finn's voice is as desolate as the view. "Oh, no."

**x**

Rey knows how to wait, very well. 

This, however, isn't the sort of waiting she learned to do. On Jakku, waiting was her entire life. She filled it up with activity. Here, there's nothing but death, and waiting is emptier than anything she's ever known.

She has company here - Chewbacca, R2, Skywalker - but, like her, they might as well be ghosts. They're all marooned alone together, caught in this stultifying psychic net. There are so many voices, shrieking for help, never resting, never succumbing. The noise is a nearly physical thing that shifts over her skin like piling sand, clogs her nose and ears, mouth, weighing her down, all the way down.

When Finn shakes her arm, calling her name, she knows that this has to be the end. To see him again - alive, moving, _talking_ to her - means she really is dying, maybe already died.

"They're really sick!" Finn shouts over his shoulder, trying to help her to her feet.

"Getting that," someone replies over the comlink. She can hear a comlink, which is odd. That doesn't seem like something a ghost would be interested in doing.

"Hold on, okay?" Finn tells her, cupping her face and peering at her. "Are you in there? _Rey._ "

She tries to answer but her mouth is _so_ dry and she's really sleepy.

Finn looks up to the ceiling and shouts again. "We've got to get out of here!"

"Working on it!" the voice replies. It must be coming in over the speaker. That makes more sense. "You try talking to a Wookiee through two droids more interested in beeping at each other like long-lost lovers! Not as fun as it sounds!"

"Where's Skywalker?" Finn asks her, frowning. Then he shakes his head, like he's remembering she's dead and can't, won't, answer. He looks so worried. She has to tell him that it's all right. She'll be quiet and gone soon and he won't need to worry any more.

Rey moves her mouth. "Finn?"

He stops and drops back to his knees. "Rey?"

"Finn!" She tips forward, trying to hug him, but her limbs aren't awake enough yet.

She thinks he's crying. She _is_ crying, big guttering wet sobs, she knows that.

*

Once Chewbacca, Finn and Poe get the _Falcon_ hooked up to the B-Wing, they tow it out of the exclusion zone and head for the nearest secure port. Luke is still passed out, but Rey is rapidly coming back to herself. She and Finn are back in the _Falcon_ , while Chewbacca and Poe and the droids are packed into the B-Wing cockpit.

She tries to explain to Finn what had happened - how the exclusion zone called them, then held them fast - but she doesn't really know _how_ to describe it. The farther away they move, the less real any of it seems.

"Singularity sirens," Finn says, holding Luke's wrist and counting off his pulse. When he's finished, he scribbles down the reading, then continues. "Beautiful creatures that sing and lure spacers to their deaths. It's a crèche fable. Probably made up to keep people away from gravity wells." He grins and points at her. "Maybe they're real! You guys are the first survivors!"

"They told you crèche fables in the First Order?" she asks. She had to learn them by herself from various free holo-libraries of classical literature.

For a moment, Finn looks baffled, almost like she suddenly started speaking Binary at him. His expression clears, just as quickly, leaving him looking almost radiant. "No. I - guess I remember it? From before."

"Wow," Rey says and he nods, eyes going wide, before he shakes himself back to calm and checks on Luke again. 

"He looks a little better."

She peers over his shoulder. Luke looks calm, she knows that much, just deeply asleep. "I guess so. It's hard to tell."

"How do you feel?" he asks, and turns a little, so she ends up leaning against him. 

Rey steps back, carefully, and smoothes her palms down the front of her breeches. "Better, a lot better."

"We're even now," Finn says. "One coma each. Let's not do that again, okay?"

He holds out his hand, presumably to shake on it, but Rey bobs her head, nodding fast enough to make herself dizzy. Somehow she'd forgotten how _good_ -but-unsettling it can feel to be around people. Around Finn, the proportion is a lot more "good" than "unsettling", but the strangeness is still there. 

Being around Luke and Chewbacca was tolerable, because that was, for the most part, work of one kind or another. This isn't work, but something else.

When Finn takes a transmission from the B-Wing, it doesn't play over the speakers this time. Just on his personal comlink. He sits down, smiling to himself, talking very softly, chuckling the whole time. He sounds gentle, and amused, like he's in on a long, beautiful joke. She catches herself moving a little closer, to hear better, but then realizes it's none of her business.

Like a switch gets flipped inside of her, that's how it feels. Rey heads into the cockpit to sit in the captain's chair. She pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. 

She has been away for a while now, she needs to remember that. Before they got caught in the exclusion zone, she hadn't thought one way or the other about what it would be like to return to the resistance. All she'd hoped was that Finn would be awake when she did. Anything beyond that wasn't real one way or the other. None of it mattered, not like Finn did.

Even in the short time she's worked with Luke, he's taken to chiding her about being patient, about embracing changes without trying to control them.

She's not trying to control anything now. She'll just wait it out, let whatever strange, choking fear is filling up inside of her sift out and leave her be. Then she'll be back to normal.

"Poe says hi," Finn says as he comes into the cockpit. Then, hesitantly, he asks, "Rey?"

"Here," she says. She unfolds her legs and sits up straighter, turning the seat to see him. "Hi to Poe."

She doesn't know Poe, so she doesn't know why they're acting like she does. She _met_ Poe, sure, but she met a lot of people in that frenzied interval between returning from Starkiller and leaving for Ahch-To. 

"You're Finn's friend," he had said, smiling. He tried to hug her before dropping his arms; then he crossed them like that was what he'd meant to do in the first place. He had a very big smile, a lot of teeth. "Hi."

"So are you," she'd said. "Finn's friend."

"Well," Poe had said, and looked away, a grin that flashed, then vanished. "Maybe, I don't know."

Now she rests her cheek against the captain's seat, imagining she can still find Solo's scent on the cheap synthetic fabric, and watches Finn.

"Poe is -" Finn says, then looks at his hands, palms, then the backs, flexing his fingers.

"He's what?" Rey asks, curious now.

Finn shrugs, grimacing a little, and scrubs one hand against the back of his head. "I don't know. He's cool, though. Very cool."

"You're so weird," she tells him. "What were you going to say?"

Finn shakes his head. "I don't know, I really don't."

"Taffy!" she shouts, remembering, and jumps to her feet, pushing past Finn, heading for the hold. He follows her, boots thumping, and it occurs to her as she dashes down the passage that this is the first time they've run together _toward_ something rather than away, in fear, out of panic.

When he catches up to her, she holds the small, bulbous fruit, cupped in both her hands, out to him.

Lifting his chin, looking slightly suspicious, Finn checks it out. "What is it?"

"Taffy-fruit." She shoves it into his hand. "Try it. It's --. Just try it. You're going to love it."

He starts to take a bite, so she snatches it away, rips off a strip of the rough red peel, then gives it back. When he takes a bite of the firm purple flesh, his eyebrows jump up, his eyes go big and wide, and, grinning, he takes another, larger bite, then another.

It tastes like nothing she's ever had, not even at Maz Kanata's. Sweet, but creamy, too, and _sharp_ , like the air after one of the winter lightning storms on Jakku.

"I told you!" She's peeling one for herself now. With Chewbacca's permission, she'd traded five cartons of random junk left in the _Falcon_ 's hold for one box of these when they stopped in Lunapolis for repairs. She'd also eaten a good six or seven more the same day, but forbade herself from having any more until she could get one to Finn so he could try, too.

Juice smeared all over their cheeks and chins, they polish off another two each. Rey is digging into another carton, searching for the small metal charm she found on the ground just before they left Ahch-To. Luke thought it was probably useless, long ago lost and broken down by the waves, and said she was welcome to it.

The metal is soft as moss, with blooms of rust over half of it, and it's shaped like a crescent moon, fatter on the bottom than the top curve.

"Here," she says when Finn joins her, looking over her shoulder to see what she's doing. She pushes it into his hand, then pretends to be busy in the next crate. There's nothing there but old packing material, but it's a good idea to keep an eye on things.

"What is this?"

She glances over her shoulder and sees Finn looking down at the thing in his palm. His hands are a lot bigger than she remembered them as, so the charm looks even smaller and sillier there.

"Never mind," Rey says, and tries to take it back, but Finn closes his fingers around it and brings his hand up to his chest.

"What is it?" he asks. "Do I keep it?"

"For you." She turns back to the crate. "Found it with Luke. Thought you'd --"

"Thanks," Finn says. 

She nods but doesn't turn around. "It's trash."

"Thank you," he says, a little more loudly.

Rey grips the edge of the crate and nods again, trying that daydream idea that Luke suggested, where her body is a waterfall and the only constant is the motion. 

Mostly, it just makes her dizzy.

"You okay?" Finn asks.

"I'm fine," she says. "We should go check on Luke, though."

"Yes," he says but he sounds cautious for some reason. Maybe she has been rude, or he's upset with her, but she doesn't know why. "Can I have another piece of fruit? Would that be okay?"

She smiles as she turns around. "No, of course, I wanted you --. Yes."

She doesn't know how to say it, what words to use: She has something, enough that she wants to share. This doesn't feel natural. She doesn't have that clutching panic of worrying that she'll run out - she _wants_ Finn to have some, even if that does mean she runs out. This feeling is different from that panic, a quieter sort of worry.

"Can I give it away, though?" Finn asks, and now he's the one not looking at her. "I was wondering, is that all right?"

"Whatever you want," Rey says, heading back to the lounge, and Luke. "I bet Poe's had it before, though."

**x**

Formation Zero lives spread out over four old Carrack-class light cruisers, heavily shielded and disguised as a run of the mill salvage convoy.

Towing the _Falcon_ into the fleet is easy. It blends in as well as if this had all been deliberately planned.

When they arrive, Poe waves Chewbacca off, directing him to the medic station, and heads through the gantry into the _Falcon_.

He finds a living legend sitting cross-legged on the tiny lounge couch, swathed in robes, playing holo-dejarik against himself. His beard glints in the low light as he holds his finger to his lips, warning Poe to be quiet, then points to the floor in front of him.

Luke Skywalker is babysitting Finn and Rey. They're slumped together on the floor, heads on each others' shoulders, fast asleep. Their faces look smudged, a little sticky. For half a strange, dizzy second, Poe thinks that they've been kissing, and, worse, that he has no idea how he feels about that.

"I woke up a little bit ago and found them like this," Luke whispers, stepping around them and gesturing Poe back the way he came. "I take it that's Finn? And you're Dameron?"

Poe doesn't know whether to salute or kneel or what the hell you do in front of a - _the_ \- Jedi. "I am."

"You look just like your mom," Luke says, smiling, and it doesn't matter how many times Poe hears that, it's never not going to sting. But there's something in Luke's eyes, even shadowed as they are by his eyebrows and hood, that softens it, makes it bearable. Luke takes Poe's arm, slipping his own through. "Can you take me to Leia?"

"That, I can definitely do," Poe says, and only looks back over his shoulder once.

**x**

Space was already at a premium but Rey and Luke can't exactly live on the _Falcon_ all the time. While Luke bunks with Leia, Rey ends up in Poe and Finn's cabin.

Finn is delighted. He's used to close quarters - it's hard to sleep alone or just with Poe in the cabin, far too quiet even with all the engine and other ship noise. This way, he has both of his favorite people within reach almost all the time. It isn't quite real, he thinks sometimes, to go from living in the armor, never thinking for himself or feeling much of anything, to being here, alive and soft-skinned and _loved_.

Or, maybe not loved, that's probably pretty excessive, but cared for, certainly cared for. Poe says once that Rey loves Finn, and Finn laughs at him for a long time.

"She does," Poe insists, helping himself to another ladleful of slop. "It's kind of beautiful. Why's that so funny?"

Finn's side hurts a little from laughing. "Because she's _Rey_. You'll see, when you get to know her."

Poe just frowns at him and Finn gets that uncomfortable suspicion again that normal life is a lot trickier than it seems.

**x**

Sometimes Poe has to stop and wonder just what the hell he thinks he's doing. He's good at shoving doubt out of his mind, just flat-out clearing the decks and getting on with what needs to be done, but there are moments - late at ship's-night, bored during briefings, caught in an unexpected queue for the refresher - when he can't shake the questions.

Even when he manages to maintain a relatively clear head, there's always other people ready to impose themselves and remind him to doubt. Most of them - Wexley congratulating him on landing "two fine pieces of young ass", for instance, then asking him loudly for tips, telling him to give him a call when Poe inevitably sprains his dick - he can push past. Optimally, he can also tell them to fuck off.

Others, not so much.

"Just what do you think you're up to?" General Organa asks him at the close of this briefing. Finn and Rey are at the other end of the conference table, fiddling with the knobs on the lens array of the projection droid.

"I don't think artillery shields are enough to -" Poe starts to say, but gives up when she shakes her head. No time for levity, Commander. He takes a breath, glances at Finn and Rey, then all around the room, as if they weren't the only thing he can see, and says, "I don't know."

"Well," she says, straightening her tunic, then touching the back of her hair. "Don't screw it up. Or them."

He grins and feels a little sick. "That's not on the agenda, no."

Before, with literally anyone else, he would have just...kicked on through this awkwardness. You have a girlfriend? A husband? Okay, I'll be over here, unless you want me in the middle? Oh, you're not up for anything serious? Me, neither, good to know.

This is not that. He doesn't know _what_ this is, but it's different.

She glances over at Luke, who's standing by the viewport, head tilted, gazing out on the dark. "I'm hardly one to talk about reasonable relationship choices."

"Oh," Poe says, and then doesn't know what else to say. "No, it's not like --"

Gathering up her notes and datapads, she looks at him sharply. Her smile, however, is soft and small, her voice gentle. "Yes, I think it _is_ like. Exactly like, even."

"Ma'am," he says. When in doubt, default to protocol.

" _Commander_ ," she replies. He is 90% sure that she just winked at him as she passed.

**x**

When Rey and Luke return from a zero-gravity training exercise, the general is there to greet them. Rey's balance has recovered nicely, but they still insist that she should return to their quarters, just in case.

"It's no trouble," Leia tells her, slipping her arm around Luke's waist, pulling herself close against him. "Please, it would be a pleasure."

"I --" Rey doesn't know what to say. "I want to go see Finn, though."

They exchange a look, which she assumes means something, but she doesn't know what.

"Thank you," she adds, in case that's the problem. "Maybe another time?"

When she slides open the door to their cabin, Poe and Finn are lying across the bed, kissing, while BB-8 projects a holo that, apparently, failed to hold their attention.

This world is full of pairs of people. She's still getting used to that, but it seems to be something that everyone else takes for granted. 

"Rey!" Finn calls when she turns to go.

"I'm sorry," she says, but she isn't sure what she's apologizing for. The phrase is fairly serviceable, however, in a lot of different, awkward situations.

"Come back," Finn says, then, to BB-8, "can you start it again from the last installment?"

BB-8 grumbles about being ignored but complies.

"You don't mind?" Rey asks as carefully but also casually as she can.

Finn snorts like she's made a bad joke. "Why would I mind?"

Poe doesn't say anything, but he lifts his head and grins, shifting over and tugging Finn so there's room for her. His face looks a little flushed, and his hair is as messy as it is in the mornings.

Rey settles onto the bed next to Finn and pulls the blanket over her legs. "What are you watching?"

But Finn has turned away from her, his hand creeping up Poe's chest, as he resumes the kiss. His back makes a long, sinuous line as his shoulders tilt and flex.

She looks back at BB-8. He has the holo paused and gives her a plot summary of everything she's missed.

It's a lot, but she think she gets it.

**x**

Squadron formation exercises go far worse and run much, much later than Poe had planned. By the time they make it back to the fleet, it's almost time for the next shift's worth of meetings. His eyes are burning, limbs heavy, as he signs off on the reports, promising himself that he'll read them for real when he wakes up. He asks BB-8 to mute all messages not from the general, the admiral, or his father, and drags himself toward bed.

Finn is asleep, tipped on his side, face to the door; Poe sheds boots, trousers, vest in the short transit across the floor and slips into bed next to him. Finn stirs slightly, but doesn't wake, just murmurs something not quite language, smacks his lips, and makes room. He lifts his arm. When Poe's settled, pressed chest-to-toe against him, his own arm around Finn's waist, Finn drops it, heavily, atop Poe, and holds on, fingers digging into Poe's shoulder blade.

His breath is warm, his skin warmer. Poe has very little room between Finn and the edge of the bed, but he's been in much tighter spaces.

Tired as he is, however, and as fully, truly relaxed he's becoming, lying here tangled up with Finn, he's also getting turned on. It's a fairly vague, even abstract, sort of thing, an intellectual exercise inspired by the heat of Finn's skin, the planes of muscle under Poe's hand, that goofy half-snore, half-chuckle thing he does. More than anything, it is the sheer beautiful fact of his presence - that he's _here_ , sharing a bed with Poe, day after day, hugging him close even in sleep, his lips moving softly against Poe's shoulder.

When Finn moves a bit, his erection brushes Poe's, and now all intellectual pretense vanishes. But Poe is _so_ tired, and he doesn't want to wake Finn, either, so he just digs his cheek into the edge of the pillow and slips his hand onto his dick to cradle it. Maybe stroke it, a little, nothing serious or intense.

Finn shouts with laughter in his sleep then, his face scrunching up. His dreams are a lot more active and, apparently, _entertaining_ than just about anyone else Poe's ever known. Finn half-rolls, half-flings himself onto his back, dragging Poe with him. Poe ends up with his face in Finn's armpit, hand still in his drawers. He's more awake now, so he tugs his shaft a couple times, inhaling Finn's scent, rocking his hips against the bed.

Someone sighs. Not Finn - he's mid-snore, and, anyway, the sound was higher than Finn's voice usually can go. Poe freezes, then, slowly, so slowly, lifts his head to look past Finn, over to the rest of the bed. Rey is there, between Finn and the wall, curled on her side, hair covering her face, wearing one of Poe's undershirts.

As carefully, but quickly, as he can, Poe extricates himself from Finn - untangles, inhales, and slides off the platform all in one motion - and makes for the 'fresher at the end of the passage. The lights are far too bright, flickering out of time. Under them, his skin looks sickly orange. He perches on the metal seat, jerking off as quickly as he can, cold, shivery, _lonely_.

He remembers feeling like this frequently when he was younger, when he'd struck out at a party or fought with a lover. Always when he'd had too much to drink. He'd end up alone, in his bunk or the dorm 'fresher, one hand on his dick, the other stuffed into his mouth to stay quiet. 

Then, coming always felt like relief and defeat simultaneously. It still does tonight.

Except now he's older, and he should really be past this. Should know better, have his shit somewhat together. At least know how to project the semblance of having said shit together.

**x**

"Don't get mad," Poe says to Finn when they manage to score five minutes together between shift changes.

Eternally optimistic, Finn already has his trousers undone and he's in the middle of taking off his shirt. "What am I going to get mad about?"

"You're _not_ going to get mad," Poe says, debating whether it's appropriate, advisable, to cop a feel now. He should wait; he doesn't want to wait. "That's what I'm saying."

"Maybe let me decide that," Finn says, but he does finish removing his shirt, and when his face is visible again, he's smiling. "What's up?"

"I made a couple deals so I can take Rey to pick up that light freighter."

A Bothan collaborator with a guilty conscience left the yacht to the general in his will; before it could be delivered, the First Order strafed the shipyard. Now, nearly two standard years later, it has been rebuilt and is ready to join the fleet. No one's been available to go retrieve it until Poe realized the shipyard was less than a hundred clicks from where he's scheduled to meet an informant

Finn twists his shirt in his hands. "How many deals?"

"Not as many as I thought I'd need to," Poe admits. "Luke said it was a great idea."

Shaking his head, Finn says, "Well, that makes everything okay."

"Finn --"

"I'm kidding," Finn says, "Sort of. Mostly."

"It's not preference. Preferential," Poe says. "Most pilots would rather have an extra shift to sleep than have to ride all the way there, wait around while I make the contact meeting, then fly it back."

"You're such a humanitarian," Finn says and kisses him.

He's kidding, but it makes Poe want to beam anyway.

Rey proves to be the best possible choice when his informant turns out to be a three-member delegation from the Knights of Ren. They are scrawnier than previous intel reports have shown, possibly new recruits, but they fight like the sick bastards they all are. No lightsabers, but one guy wields an energy-fed halberd that shreds, then burns away, half of Poe's new jacket and both layers underneath. Distracted by the pain, fighting to shed the rest of the burning jacket, he stumbles a little. Another knight, wielding a six-sided mace, slams it against Poe's ribs.

He's on the ground, promising himself that he can writhe and cry as much as he wants to _later_ , firing his blaster at the asshole with the mace. When he crumples back, mace ringing as it hits the ground, Rey is visible. Looming over Poe, she is glaring at the last knight. The tallest of the three, he's scrabbling back on his ass like an overturned, unshelled louse-crab.

Rey advances on him. Her face is contorted, wild and _sharp_ like a fang or a claw. Hungry.

"Let him go," Poe says.

She turns to him, the lightsaber pulsing in her hand. "No."

At the sight, his balls want to crawl up inside his body and never leave. Poe can't blame them, but he sits up, testing how much his ribs hurt (a lot) and whether he can breathe (a little). "Take his helmet and weapon, but let him go. Let him explain himself to them."

Sweat coats Rey's face, slides down her front. When she holds the knight still with her boot on his throat, Poe sees that the sweat runs all the way down her back, too, like an arrow, another blade.

Poe strips the snivelling knight, not just of weapons but comlinks and even his socks. Poe is in no shape to conduct an interrogation, and he's not sure he wants to let Rey try on her own. They could bring him in for questioning, but there's just the two of them and no one to guard him on either ship. 

He limps away, shivering and sniffling, into the night. Rey wants to follow him, but Poe distracts her with promises of food.

After wrapping his ribs in three more bacta patches than is strictly necessary - it _hurts_ and who's a better judge of that, Poe or the dispensary droid? - Poe hands Rey a red cloak, the best he can do for a disguise on no notice, and takes her to the city's night market for pepper noodles and fruit ices.

She eats like she's starving, like she always does, but he doesn't get the same frantic, near-panic sense from her. She seems a little more relaxed than he's ever seen; he doesn't know if violence calms her or if she's getting more comfortable with him. He devoutly hopes it's the latter.

"Are you going to finish that?" she asks, poking his container of noodles.

He gives it to her and orders another, spicier, for the trip back.

"Get three, your choice," he tells her when they stop at a pastry stall near the exit. Rey has her lower lip in her teeth as she studies the tiny holo sculptures on offer. She shakes her head, however, so Poe says, "Or more. However many you want."

"You sure?" she asks. It only then occurs to him to worry. The resistance can't be bankrupted by one padawan with a sweet tooth, can it?

She chooses nine - one each for Finn and Luke and seven for herself. Three of those are polished off by the time they reach the shipyard.

On the rebuilt yacht, the stink of metal cleaner and fresh O2 line is still strong. Rey takes a look at the controls, nods to herself, then stuffs half of the fourth pastry into her mouth.

"That's it?" Poe asks when she takes the captain's seat and straps in. "Good to go?"

"Yes," she says, still chewing. There's a smudge of glaze on her chin and another at the corner of her mouth and he has to quell the instinct to flick them off.

"Okay, then. I'll call when I'm in atmo."

She grunts assent and Poe heads off to hail a jitney back to his ship.

She hadn't said much on the trip over, even less during the fight, but she's positively chatty as they wend their way back to the fleet. It must be the sugar.

"How does it work?" she asks over the comlink.

"How does what work?"

"You and Finn."

Poe checks the hydraulics' data-feed before replying. "Um. You mean physically, or --?"

Rey huffs out a breath that crackles in his ear. "No!"

"Oh, good," he says. So much of the time he feels about a hundred years older than Finn and Rey. If he had to explain how two humanoid men find pleasure together, he'd feel a thousand years older than that. "So what do you mean?"

Rey is quiet for a while. "How do you know when you're a pair? How does that work?"

Poe drums his fingers on the nav board. BB-8 suggests that symptoms of mammalian pair-bonding include rises in body temperature and respiration, increased blood flow to the genitals, elevations in apocrine secretions, and floods of dopamine and norepinephrine in the brain.

"I don't know," Poe tells her finally. "I just had a feeling."

Put like that, it sounds both simple and straightforward, but it wasn't either of those things. It was an impulse, a crazy hunch, and a really deeply-felt wish. The fact that Finn assented, seemed to feel roughly similar, is one of those mysteries that Poe is definitely not the person to solve. Those questions are for Jedi and other mystics.

"That's what Finn said, too." 

"That it was just a feeling?"

"Yes." Rey is quiet for a while after that before she says, "It's not that helpful, by the way. It doesn't explain very much at all."

Despite the fact that she can't see him, Poe shrugs. "Did he say anything else? About -- me? Us."

"Yes," Rey says. Her tone sounds warm, but he could be imagining that. "A lot."

This is a closed channel. Still, he doesn't relish the idea of Connix or even Leia coming across this conversation accidentally. "Right, never mind."

"That's okay, I wouldn't tell you anyway," Rey says. "It's private."

She sounds sad, he realizes. Wistful, maybe. "Are you all right?"

Rey takes her time answering. "Everyone's in pairs. Or wants to be."

"Nah," he tells her, and then doesn't have any idea what else to say. "Hardly."

They make it back to the fleet without further incident, though Poe's ribs ache and grind by the time they're cleared to land. He should go to the medics, he knows that, and then check the yacht and file his reports. First he needs, wants, to see Finn.

After half an hour of futile, increasingly frustrating search, Poe finds Finn cross-legged on the yacht's bridge, devouring the last of the noodles. He and Rey are playing a dice game for the final pastry. Rey imitates the last knight crying and crawling away, and they laugh hard enough to shake the floor. 

Poe steps backward, silently, and heads for the medics.

He can't get between them. He knows that in a few different ways simultaneously, both on a strongly-felt ethical level and on a factual one, too. He shouldn't, and doesn't, want to get between them. Even if he did, he _can't_. It would like trying to slide between the rain and the wind, or a river and its bank.


	2. toward

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Maybe we should talk about all of this," Finn says. "Us, and everything going on."_
> 
> _Poe starts laughing for real, and then can't stop when he realizes all too late that that wasn't a joke. It was an entirely earnest suggestion._

**x**

This conversation is not going very well. A big part of the problem, he's fairly sure, has to do with how he's sitting here in the desk chair while Rey and Finn sit next to each other on the bed, their legs sticking out. They're holding hands and looking at him expectantly. Patiently, too, though he's not sure how long that will last; they can get distracted pretty easily.

BB-8 had been next to him, but now he's rolling back and forth between the bed and the chair, a little antsy.

"Just explain it better," BB-8 tells him.

"Yeah, buddy, I'm _trying_ ," Poe replies.

"Explain _what_?" Rey asks.

Finn frowns, looking at her, then BB-8, and finally at Poe. "Can someone tell me what's going on? What's the problem?"

"No problem!" Poe says before BB-8 can contribute. "There's no problem. I wanted to talk to you, I thought we should --"

BB-8 chirps.

"He's right," Rey says. "Now you're just repeating yourself without adding any new information."

Poe slumps, head falling back, and groans a little. Why is it up to him to make this conversation happen? It doesn't seem fair that just because he's older and, sure, also the only one with any previous experience in actual functioning (for varying degrees of "functioning") relationships with other sentient life forms, that he has to be the one to convene this damn meeting and explain what's going on.

_Because life is unfair, buddy_ , his dad's voice reminds him. Poe gets the point in a way he never quite managed before.

"Oh, is that all?" Rey asks and Poe realizes he's missed something. 

She's leaning over, addressing BB-8, whose crown is tilted at a jaunty, informative angle as he trills assent.

"No, that's not --" Poe scrubs both hands over his face and tries again. "No, it's not about that."

"About what?" Finn asks. 

"Poe's uncomfortable having me around when you two fuck," Rey says.

"Oh," Finn says. "Huh, really?"

At first, Poe thought that Finn's blithe lack of self-consciousness around intimacy and even nakedness was something programmed into him. He's coming to believe, however, that Finn is just that trusting and confident. It still hasn't occurred to him that other people need more -- privacy, walls, boundaries. Rules. 

"That's not --!" Poe kicks his heel against the floor. Frustration burns right through him, so hot and fast, then leaves him sagging and a little chilly. "No, that isn't why I'm -- doing whatever the fuck I'm trying to do." 

"Do you want to stop?" Finn asks Poe. He sounds so patient, so sweet, that it's like a warm breeze over a fresh cut. Lovely, but it stings all the same.

"This conversation? Or screwing around?" Poe laughs a little, joylessly. "Yes, very much to the first. No, never, for the second."

Finn smiles at the last part, quickly, and ducks his head.

"Do you want me to go?" Rey asks and slides forward, off the bed. "I'm going to go."

BB-8 beeps, long and harshly, and Rey freezes. 

"No!" Poe says at the same time, which is basically exactly what BB-8 was trying to say. "No, that's _really_ not what I want. Opposite."

"Maybe we should talk about all of this," Finn says. "Us, and everything going on."

Poe starts laughing for real, and then can't stop when he realizes all too late that that wasn't a joke. It was an entirely earnest suggestion.

He has to hold up his hand and apologize through the helpless laughter. "I'm not --. Not laughing at you, I promise."

Rey looks around the narrow cabin, her face intent but otherwise unreadable. Poe knows that look very well already. She's sizing the situation up and evaluating options and possibilities. If they were a hyperdrive or malfunctioning S-foil, in about a minute they'd be disassembled and spread out before her, awaiting repair. What's more, when she was done with them, they'd be functioning better than they ever had, too. He half-wishes he were a machine in her hands.

What he can't read is what she's deciding.

BB-8 bumps her calf and squeaks, then lets loose a rapid series of cheeps and twitters. Listening, Rey cocks her head and frowns slightly, then starts nodding.

"It's not that easy," Poe tries to say, but she holds up her hand so she can listen to the rest.

Finn sits back, pressing his lips together, looking up and over at Poe with his hands clasped in his lap. Poe tries to send him - something not quite a verbal thought, a warm wave of reassurance, perhaps a _hang in there, nothing's wrong_. But he's no Jedi, not even remotely sensitive, let alone a telepath, so instead he drags his chair over and grabs for Finn's hand.

Sitting across the room like an angry prefect was a stupid thing to do, anyway.

When Rey turns back to them, she smiles at Finn. "He says that Poe has been researching various relationship arrangements and different cultural understandings around them."

Poe would like to disappear approximately thirteen seconds ago. He hasn't done this much reading since his first year at the academy. Finn tightens his hold on Poe's hand, however, so he's stuck here. Plus, he doesn't have anything like time-travel technology.

"-- but BB-8 suggested instead we think about it in terms of different kinds of needs and then how to answer those needs." She elbows Finn. "You first. What do you need?"

Finn's eyes widen and he swallows a few times. "Food, I guess. Shelter? Water or other sources of adequate hydration." When Poe squeezes his hand, rubbing his thumb over Finn's first knuckle, Finn startles a little. "Was that right?"

"Of course it was," Poe says.

At the same time, Rey says, firmly, "There's no right or wrong."

"I think --" Poe tries to say but BB-8 hoots at him. "Thanks, pal. Thinking may not be my strong suit, but hear me out."

Now they're just about back where they started. Great.

Poe takes a breath. Life isn't fair, but sometimes the hand you're dealt is so bizarrely wonderful that you might as well tell the world. 

With his free hand, he points at Rey. "You: I like you a lot. Finn loves you. Stick around, please. I want you to stick around." She grins and looks away, shoulders lifting. Not a bad response, so far as he can tell. He lifts Finn's hand in his. His chest feels either utterly hollow, just an immense echoing cavern, or brimming with hot, roiling gases. It keeps switching back and forth. "You: love you a lot."

Finn blinks a few times, and his fingers flex against Poe's, and for a moment, Poe wonders if he's gone deaf, because everything has gone _perfectly silent_.

Then BB-8 trills, a little assertively, reprovingly.

"And I love BB-8," Poe adds, absurdly grateful for the slight change in subject and massive lightening of tone. "In case anyone was wondering, which doesn't seem possible, but he'd like it on the record."

Finn is _looking_ at him, so calmly and patiently that he could be thinking anything, anything at all. His gaze is steady as a rangefinder's. Poe doesn't know anything, not any longer.

"It's just that," Poe adds, and he thinks his voice might be a little loud, but maybe there's just something wrong with his ears, or maybe he's slightly hysterical, "I don't want that, those feelings, to predominate. Take precedence. They shouldn't predominate --. _Shit_. BB-8, what's the word?"

He boop-boops.

"Supersede," Rey translates for Finn. Poe has even less of a chance of guessing what she's thinking and feeling than he has with Finn. "He doesn't want you-with-him to supersede me-with-you or me-with...him?" She frowns a little at that, checking with BB-8.

"Me with friend you," Poe tells her. At this point, he has completely lost the ability to speak in real sentences. He sounds like the awful Gungan comic relief in an old holo-drama.

"Good, that's good." She nods emphatically. "I don't want to screw around. Not with anyone."

"Right, okay," Poe says. He'd figured as much, but maybe some of his research readings were right and getting everything said and above-board _is_ a good idea. Even if he does feel goofy as hell trying to do this right.

"So then it's a question of what do I need," Finn starts to say, then pauses, squinting off into space, for a really long time during which Poe forgets how to breathe. Rey, too, is watching him, almost as carefully as Poe is. Her eyes are narrowed, her lips thin and pressed together. "What I need not for survival or anything, but in --"

"Your heart," Rey says, simple as that. The way she smiles at Finn, full and warm, makes Poe smile back, even though no one's looking at him.

"Huh," Finn says, nodding now, smiling to himself. He's still looking off, away, but his smile starts to shift from personal and private into something as broad and big as Rey's. He tightens his hold on Poe's hand and takes Rey's with his other. "Wow, okay."


End file.
